This Worthless, Overpriced Degree
by la chiede il tuo cor
Summary: ...was Renesmee's idea; not mine. However, neither Edward or I were about to deny Renesmee anything- even if it meant braving a college dormitory with too many married vampires and a werewolf in tow. No chance of discovery there- none at all...
1. Chapter 1

"Be that as it may, Mr. Cullen, we require all incoming freshmen to be housed on campus." The unpleasantly nasal voice of the dean of student life came- somewhat distorted- through the cell phone. Edward pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger in that characteristic and always endearing gesture that I loved. As endearing the resultant gestures of this particularly frustrating conversation happened to be, however, our current predicament still existed: four married couples (each with their own particular sets of non-human tendencies) could hardly be expected to live in a college dormitory. "The best compromise that we can offer is housing you all in co-educational dorms."

"Graduate student housing is-"

"Reserved for graduate students, Mr. Cullen. I apologize."

I could see the wheels turning in Edward's head, and wondered how large of a bribe he was willing to offer and exactly to whom he would be offering it. However, Renesmee seemed to be on the same page as I was- and seemed to be as mortified at the prospect as I would have been in my years as a human.

"Edward… please don't make a production of this," she whispered, her words more _sigh_ than substance. "You want me to have human experiences? Let me be a college kid… a real one, okay?" She crossed the room in less than a tenth of a second- but gracefully, serenely: her hand rested against Edward's cheek before he could say a word. I didn't have to know what Renesmee showed him to know that he would cave in less time than it had taken her to move from the foot of the staircase to the pale beige couch on which Edward and I both perched.

Edward sighed, giving Renesmee a long-suffering look. "Then I suppose that that arrangement will have to be sufficient. Thank you for your time." He closed the phone before the dean could say another word. He then turned to Renesmee. "I do hope that Jacob can manage."

"He _does_ have to keep phasing or he'll start to age… and…" I let my voice trail off deliberately.

Renesmee rolled her eyes. "I'm more than aware of the situation," she said, breath escaping frustratedly between her teeth. "Believe me: I'm more aware than either of you. However… these doors have locks; he can phase in our room." Edward flinched: though Renesmee had been married to Jake for more than a year, our family was entirely aware that _Nessie Black_'s new name was a subject of slight discomfort to Edward, though he handled himself admirably in most situations- so admirably, in fact, that Renesmee and Jake had been living in the small cottage that had been given to Edward and me in the early days of _our_ marriage. However accepting as Edward tried to be, though, facts were facts: Renesmee was a mere eight years of age. "In any case," she said, bringing me abruptly back to the present, "we all have to hunt, and that need bears the implication that we _will_ leave campus with some frequency."

"Naturally," Edward said, not allowing the strain that I could feel emanating from his body in waves to permeate his tone: in fact, I doubted that what strain I could detect was noticeable to anybody else in the house save for Jasper.

"You will simply have to act with more conviction than usual." Carlisle's voice came gently from the top of the staircase; he entered the room just after he finished his sentence. "You _are_ right, though, Nessie … this isn't an experience you should miss." I could tell that his statement was directed, in part, at me: after my Dartmouth plans had been derailed by a far more important life than my own, it had been hard to pick up the pieces- thus, I still had no college degree.

_And you're the only one of the family who still hasn't picked a major- don't forget that_, I thought to myself chidingly. Renesmee had picked Clement University due to the fact that it was a small liberal arts college nearly in the middle of nowhere, Michigan; it was attached to the Clement Conservatory of Music (a prerequisite for her; for a girl who had been accepted to Juilliard, Curtis, New England Conservatory and the Cleveland Institute of Music, a preeminent conservatory education was not something that she was willing to sacrifice); and, most of all, we could look forward to both a distinct lack of sunny days and fabulous hunting prospects.

_So, basically, when I'm done with my pointless two-hundred-grand degree in- oh, I don't know, English Lit- we can move back to Forks or some other place like it and start high school again… after Edward's third medical degree or second law degree or third composition degree or_-

My thoughts were silenced by Edward's lips brushing against my collarbone: apparently, as I'd been thinking, the room had emptied. _Carlisle is tactful as always_, I thought, _and Renesmee is quickly becoming as empathetic as is humanly possible… or not humanly._ I turned my head to kiss Edward properly.

"Nervous?" He whispered, his close proximity almost managing to make my dead heart flutter… almost.

"About what?" I feigned nonchalance.

"You don't fool me, Mrs. Cullen. What's on your mind?" His razor-sharp teeth grazed my ear, and my sharp intake of breath betrayed me.

"You don't think that this is a bad idea."

"Not at all. We've gone this long in various similar circumstances while avoiding detection. You went to high school with us before knowing, er, the truth of matters… there is no reason for this to be any different."

I sighed, pulling away from his embrace to better clear my head. "You weren't living this close to, well, a very wrongfully tempting definition of the _board_ part of _room and board_. And you didn't have _another_ vampire, an immortal daughter and her imprinted seven-foot-tall overly-warm werewolf husband to contend with, and-"

His lips silenced me again as he pulled my face to his. Finally, after what could have been seconds or an eternity, he lifted his face from mine, smirking.

"Edward?"

"Yes, Bella?" He echoed my slightly coy tone.

"We leave in… what… five days?"

"Your mathematical skills never cease to amaze." He darted away from the light swat that I aimed at his arm- a light swat that could have put a serious dent in a military tank.

"Well, I just thought that I might want to point out that we have limited time to visit our meadow and do certain things…"

His eyebrow raised. "Such as?"

I fixed him with a withering gaze that somehow didn't manage to reach my eyes. "Such as having loud and unnecessarily destructive sex."

He was still able to move nearly fast enough for me to miss his motions, I was pleased to see, as he flew to my side, lifted me into his arms, and began to run toward the promise of doing things that were _loud and unnecessarily destructive_.


	2. Chapter 2

I cast an eye over the schedules that were laid out on Bella's desk. It was simply a casual glance, but I was immediately able to tabulate a compiled version of all of the schedules in my head, showing side-by-side who would be where in which hour. Edward had somehow arranged to be in nearly all of Bella's classes, though they had different majors… Edward was also taking nearly twice the number of hours that Bella was. She couldn't be happy about that… I closed my eyes. My parents, thank god, had only one class with me- the one class that all freshmen had together, called _First-Semester Convocation_. Further scanning, however, showed me that Alice and I had only a couple of hours apart… I scowled at this revelation, knowing that my parents had arranged that for her to _keep an eye on me_. Jacob and I weren't to be together often, though, but I had expected that: his major of Environmental Studies and my major of Vocal Performance wouldn't often cross paths- in fact, as Alice and I were conservatory students, we had very few classes at the actual university itself at all.

I sighed, plopping down on the futon that Grandpa Charlie had bought for my parents. Their room was small, though they had maximized space by removing one of the twin-sized beds from the room and lofting the second so close to the ceiling that it would be hard for even tiny Alice to squeeze up there by herself… not that my parents (or any of my family, for that matter) required sleep. I wondered vaguely about the sex, and then cringed. Judging from myself and Jake, however, the floor would be just as good as the bed for them. I arranged my mouth into a quiet moue of distaste and tucked my feet under me so that no part of me was touching the floor, though we'd only just moved in. I then glanced up at the clock that Edward had somehow been able to mount on the exposed brick (read: unfinished) wall. I wouldn't be surprised if he had simply scooped out a section of the wall in the right shape and nestled the clock in the hole.

In any case, I'd been sitting, waiting for a half hour. Emmett and Jacob decided that they would look more _normal_ than anybody else while moving things into the rooms in which we would all be living: while they were both superhumanly strong, they both looked like they could have come by that strength naturally. However, were Bella, Alice and I to actually pull our weight, it would turn some heads. Thus, when Edward and Jasper had decided to take the lay of the hunting land, Bella and Alice had (after being assured by Rosalie that all decorative and organizational decisions would be made by her and me) gone along with them.

But. It was _my_ room that they were currently setting up (well, mine and Jake's), and Rosalie had decided to _surprise_ me. I didn't know that I'd like being surprised with my living space… but I could always go back and fix it later. Jake would notice, but he'd probably find it amusing. _He finds everything that I do amusing, no matter how annoying I get_, I thought fondly, my right hand tracing the very same promise bracelet that I'd worn for as long as I could remember. As if of its own accord, my right hand wandered down the back of my left hand from the bracelet to my engagement and wedding rings. _There are some perks to being undead, you know_.

"Nessie, sweetheart?" Rosalie's head peaked into my parents' room, and I felt my eyes become instantly more animated.

"You're done?"

"We're done, kid. Want to see?"

I was standing before Rosalie had finished speaking. "Please!"

She chuckled indulgently and ruffled my hair as I passed her. A pair of boys passed the doorway from which we were emerging, and I almost giggled as they stopped in their tracks, their hearts pounding and breath catching. I could hear them as we turned the corner, their voices combining to make an almost-coherent set of phrases: "Holy _shit_, man, did you _see_ them? They're living on _our_ floor? _SCORE!_ They're going to _shower_ here!" Neither smelled too terribly appealing… luckily enough.

I heard a faint growl coming from the dorm room that had been marked with a piece of construction paper as belonging to "J and R Black" and I had to suppress a giggle.

"Don't worry about them, bae," I said soothingly as I nudged the door further open to see what damage Rosalie had done with the space that was to be mine.

Rose never disappointed, I thought to myself. The tiny space had been transformed; curtains of blue silk flowed from rods spanning every wall save for the windows, which had been draped in white gauze and framed in golden Christmas lights. A deep gold rug had been cut to match the disproportionate angles of the room. The two twin beds had been pushed together and joined, and were covered with the fluffiest blue comforter I'd ever seen. Blushing slightly, I noticed that the bed was far and away the focal point of the room- above, even, the bookcase that somehow managed to dominate one of the blue-silk walls, or the two cherry-wood desks that were pushed against the foot of the bed and had probably cost as much as Jake's new Ducati- each.

"Nice, isn't it?" Jake's warm arms encircled me from behind, and suddenly Rosalie's over-the-top decorations felt as much like home as Forks ever had.

"It could be a cave, and it would be nice- home is where you are." I leaned my head back onto his chest just in time to hear Rosalie's furious hiss. "Of course, this is _vastly_ preferable to a cave."

Rosalie's tone let me know that she wasn't going to let things go so easily, but her words were nice enough. "Alice will be taking care of the closet later- just so that you're warned." She spun on her heel and left us alone, slamming the door behind her.

I spun in Jacob's grasp so that I was facing him; he loosened his arms so that I could look up into his face. "So."

"So?" He cocked an eyebrow at me and smiled, making it altogether too easy for me to lose myself in his eyes. I looked away slightly, focusing on his chin so that I wouldn't be too hopelessly inarticulate.

"You know, we _are_ going to have to watch ourselves rather carefully…"

"Oh, really?" He leaned toward me so that his lips were resting in the hollow behind my right ear.

"Yes, really. You know, we'd really be better off not bringing on the ire of the Volturi, and we are… rather… um…" His mouth had moved down my neck to caress the space between my neck and shoulder.

"Yes? I'm listening," he murmured, nipping playfully at my skin.

"Uh, um, exposed here… so many people, you know… notice and stuff and… um…"

He pulled back to look at me. "Nessie, are you really trying to have a conversation, or is this like an Olympic Stuttering event?"

I pressed my palm against his cheek, thinking of a time that I'd pushed him into the river during a battle of wits after a hunting trip. Unsurprisingly, he burst out into wild laughter, causing me to duck away from him as he doubled over. I wrinkled my nose and hissed at him, and he grabbed me by the wrist, swung me into his arms and kissed me.

Edward and I returned alone from our hunt just after dark, sated in more than just thirst. We mounted the stairs in silence, slowly as not to attract undue attention- though the stairwell was empty, I was sure that the security cameras would be watched. This was, after all, the weekend before school was to begin, and some of the residents of our dormitory were still moving in. Edward held the door to our floor open, and I rummaged through my (Prada) purse (a gift from Alice, of course) for my keychain. _Just another human experience… Bear with it. But what are we _doing_- what are we _waiting_ for? What are we working for? Where are we going?_ This wasn't the first time that I'd asked myself questions of this nature, and this wasn't the first time that I'd answered them by looking into my husband's golden eyes. I eased the door shut, not breaking eye-contact with him.

"Bella… Please tell me what you're thinking."

I contemplated allowing him into my head for a moment, and then decided against it: I was simply too mentally tired and preoccupied to focus enough. "I have a strange feeling."

He wrapped both of my hands in his and then pulled me further into the center of the room. "About what? Don't be evasive, please."

I sighed. "Alice hasn't… seen anything lately, has she?"

Edward looked at me, concern creasing his forehead. "No… Bella, what…?"

"And that fact has nothing to do with her proximity to Jacob, or to Renesmee?"

He shook his head emphatically. "No. She spends enough time far enough from them that she would have time to have seen anything that- Bella, _what_, exactly are you getting at? Are you anticipating something?"

I pulled one hand from his grasp and, without dropping the hand still joining us, turned toward the window, slowly pacing forward toward it to glance down at the ground below us. "You know, I really hate that we have to use the stairs these days… and at such a humanly glacial pace, too." My laugh sounded forced, even to me.

"Bella."

"I feel like…" I struggled to find words to describe a feeling that I didn't understand. "I feel like we've been building up to something, waiting for something. All of us. Like something's about to come to our attention- or already has and we don't recognize it. Something that's really important, not necessarily something bad, but something… something important. It's not a bad feeling, really, I just…"

I glanced up at Edward to see that his look of concern hadn't relaxed at all: if anything, it had intensified. "Do you want me to call Alice? Not that she can't hear us- she probably can at the moment, but unless she's specifically listening to us…"

I gave his hand a slight squeeze. "Don't worry about it. I'm not worried… I just feel…"

"Something's coming."

"Yes."

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I'll ask Alice to keep a lookout anyway."

"But I don't know what she's looking _for_."

Edward ran his hand up and down my arm, finally resting it on my shoulder and caressing my collarbone with his thumb. "Vigilance is never the poorest of ideas… but onward to more _collegiate_ matters. Our classes begin tomorrow, so if there was anything organizational that you wanted to do…?"

I groaned. "I don't know how I let her talk me into this…" I seized my schedule from the desk. "I guess it wouldn't kill me to figure out where all of these are… I might not be a klutz anymore, but that's not going to help my non-scent-aided sense of direction."

"I suppose not… though you could just look at a map."

He chuckled and I glowered at him. "I don't want to have my nose buried in a map all day. It would be my first day at Forks all over again."

"Actually… if you remember, you didn't _need_ that map. You had Mike Newton to show you around. So, I suppose, if you want to unleash your charms on the unsuspecting male populace, I couldn't _stop_ you." I rolled my eyes, and he gave me a smile that made my insides melt a little bit.

"It could be interesting."

"_Interesting_ isn't really the word that I would use, but I suppose that you could call it that."

"I _am_ curious as to how humans that I'm not really related to will react to me."

He shrugged. "Why? You saw _us_ interact with all of… them. Back in Forks."

"Yes, but before I knew. Seeing it from the inside will be far more interesting. Plus, I want to keep an eye out for Renesmee. This is far and away the most human contact she's had in her life, and I want to be sure that she adjusts properly… Did you tell her that humans actually _need_ to shower? She'll want to be seen going in and out of them daily- not just when she gets blood down her front after hunting."

Edward gave me a pacifying look. "Jacob _does_ have that under control."

My lips pressed together tightly and I snorted. "The way he smells? I can't really be sure of that." Renesmee's response to the last time that I'd mentioned Jake's revolting Werewolf smell echoed in my head- _Really, Bella, just because he doesn't smell like _food_…_ Half of my mouth twisted upwards in a smirk.

Edward was watching me as if he wanted to ask what I was thinking, and then decided against it. "I'll bring it up to her… and also mention that she'll want to be seen brushing her teeth, too."

"You think of everything, don't you?"

"I try."

I smiled at him. _I'll put up with college bullshit so long as I can keep my eternity of _him_._


	3. Chapter 3

I have Renesmee referring to Edward and Bella by their first names for a few reasons. First off, Bella refers to her biological parents by their names in her head, if not to their faces. In fact, in the beginning of Twilight it is difficult for Bella to remember to call Charlie "Dad". I don't suppose that Bella would ask that Renesmee call her "mom" when Bella herself does not like calling her parents "Mom and Dad". Secondly, Edward calls Carlisle and Esme by their given names as well (most of the time; he calls Esme "mom" once). Third, I think that it would be conspicuous for Renesmee to be seen calling Edward and Bella her parents: physically, Renesmee may actually be older than them at this point (that depends on what Stephenie Meyer calls physical maturity- that can be anything between sixteen and twenty-one). Hope that answers everybody's questions…

…

The bed was colder than usual to begin with and then there was a draft.

Were I not so horribly tired, I would have screamed. I pried one eye open and growled in the direction of whoever had pulled down my covers .

"Wakey-wakey!" It was Alice, of course, standing next to my decadent dorm room bed. Nobody else would _dare_ to be so cheery at…

"Five-_thirty_ in the morning!"

Alice looked completely unruffled. "Exactly. I'm supposed to get you up. Jacob's in the shower- he went for a run earlier and asked me to give you this before it got too cold." She was holding out a Venti-sized Starbucks cup that, I could tell, contained something very unlike coffee. That improved my mood a bit- I hadn't been looking forward to having to eat in the cafeteria this morning due to the time that it would take to inconspicuously travel the distance to a place to hunt.

I sniffed at the cup. "Black bear?"

"Mmhmm. Don't ask me how he got it into the cup- I don't know and I don't really _want_ to know." She handed me the cup and I tipped it backwards, draining it in one setting. "Well. I _guess_ you can go back to sleep if you _really_ must… but your parents want to see you before class… and they have their first class at eight, so…"

"We don't have to be anywhere until _ten_!"

She gave me a withering look. "We need to be seen practicing, too. Just because you have the best high C in the world doesn't mean that you don't need to be seen working for it."

I looked at the ceiling and prayed for patience- Alice was about a head shorter than I, but she was still a lot stronger and faster. _It wouldn't be a good idea to try to jump her._ "So you want me to get up." I swung my legs out of the bed.

"Yay! Don't forget to take a shower!"

She danced out of the room as I hissed at her.

_It's before six. Nobody's even _in_ the girls' showers now- or at least I can't hear anybody in there. Screw showering._ As important as hygiene may be to humans, a vampire's body seldom needs to be cleaned: I, as a half-vampire, was lucky enough to only really _need_ a shower when I got dirt or blood all over me.

I rose and made the bed at a only-slightly-faster-than-human speed and dressed in the outfit that Alice had laid out on my desk chair; a sheer gold top over a beige tank top and a pair of too-nice jeans; the sort that Bella would feel the need to fray a bit before wearing them. I was not so prejudiced against expensive clothing, but I _did_ have to admit that the jeans wouldn't have turned heads at an opera matinee.

The door to our room opened as I was disposing of the Starbucks cup; Jake entered the room wearing only his towel around his waist.

"Well, if _that's_ not distracting…"

"Good morning to you, too," he chuckled.

"Huh. I don't like how that towel looks on you. Take it off."

He raised an eyebrow and kissed me high on my left cheekbone. "Your parents are waiting for you, love." I pressed my hand to his bare, gleaming, well-chiseled, russet, warm- _God, STOP with the adjectives; you're going to make yourself sick_- chest while thinking about exactly how little my waiting parents bothered me. He chuckled again and drew me in closer to kiss the top of my head. "They can hear us, you know, and they're getting impatient. And I need to get dressed- I have class at eight. And this whole college thing _was_ your idea."

I pushed away from him playfully. "Yes, a college degree won't benefit you at _all_."

"You have your mother to thank for me even finishing _high school_."

"Yes, yes, I know…" I winked at him and slid out of the room. My next door neighbor was leaving his room wearing jogging shorts and a sweat band; he caught sight of me and dropped his iPod on his foot, proceeding to somehow tangle the cords of his headphones into his shoelaces. "Uh… good morning."

His face arranged itself into a _holy Hell, she just spoke to me_ look of panic. I shrugged and walked around the corner to my parents' room, gave a perfunctory knock, and entered.

"G'morning." Edward and Bella were seated in front of Edward's sleek laptop.

"Good morning, Renessmee," Bella answered smoothly. Sometimes I hated how her voice made mine feel- strident and raspy- though I knew that my voice was more beautiful than any human's voice could ever be. "We've had an email from Carlisle- do you want to read it?"

"In a second- wasn't there something that you wanted to talk about, though?"

Edward looked up and gave me a wry half-smile. "I just wanted to warn you to be careful about the human male populace. I've heard what they've been thinking about you and Rosalie and… well."

I blushed slightly. "That bad?"

"If you don't want Jake to lose it and phase- which, really, might be humorous- you'll want to make sure that you assert that you _are_ married. They already think that we're part of some strange religious sect, so it won't be too hard to isolate ourselves- but, of course, if you should find that you don't _want_ to be isolated… give me the rundown one more time?"

I rolled my eyes. Edward had already asked me to describe the new 'relations' of our family at least five times in the last day- but he wanted to be sure that I could deliver without hesitation. "My name is Renesmee Black, born Renesmee Cullen, the daughter of Carlisle and Esme. My twin brother married Bella Swan, older sister of Alice Swan, now Alice Whitlock after her marriage to Jasper. Emmett and Rosalie Hale- formerly Rosalie Vera- are of no blood relation to us, but Rosalie was adopted by Carlisle and Esme when she was very young… Satisfied?"

Edward grinned. "Quite, actually. So," he said, quickly swinging one leg over the chair to face me, "are you ready for your first class?"

"Yes. I have theory at ten."

"Should be easy for you." Bella was right; it would be. Edward had taught me standard seventeenth and eighteenth-century counterpoint when I was two.

"I'm going to go practice before then." Singing was something natural to me, as my body's patterns never changed: I never practiced save for when I was learning new repertoire. But I was going to have to start.

"Also a good idea."

"What do you guys have first?"

Edward sighed, leaning his head forward to pinch the bridge of his nose in that characteristically annoyed way that he did, and even Bella looked aggravated. "Freshman English."

"Ha." As a conservatory student, I had very few core academic requirements; Introductory English Composition was not one of them. "Have fun with that."

Edward glowered in my direction. "Young lady, when you've suffered through beginning composition classes five times in a lifetime that never seems to last as long as the class that you're sitting in does, let me know if you still feel so inclined to _gloat_."

I sniggered unkindly, and then smiled warmly at both of them. "So I guess I'll be going?"

Bella shrugged. "If you'd like. Please don't leave the building without Alice, though." I gave her a look of unflattering disbelief and she amended: "just for this first day."

I giggled. "Okay, if you want. Love you guys."

Alice was waiting in the hallway, holding my packed backpack. "Are you ready?"

"What's the rush? It's only fifteen after _six_."

"But I want to check out the building! Get the _feel_ of the place! Find out which rooms have the best acoustics! Come _on_, it'll be so much fun!"

"Alice, this had _better_ not be a ruse to make me go shopping with you."

The girl had the gall to look offended, and then slightly sheepish. "Well… I _did_ think that maybe we could scope out some of the local stores- see what's really upscale and what's substandard and so on- but if the idea really bothers you _that _much…" Her bottom lip jutted out in a half-contrived and half-extremely genuine pout.

"At six in the morning."

"You are _way_ too preoccupied with concepts of time, do you know that?"

"_I_ need sleep. Thank God my husband understands that."

"Hmm. Well. Are you coming?"

I groaned. "Fine."

…

I could hear the whispers as Edward and I walked down the hallway of the English building hand-in-hand. I wore a nicely understated shirt with three-quarter length sleeves that somehow drew attention to my fingers- and to my rings. Edward hadn't asked me to dress to emphasize my marital status, but I knew that today would be far easier on him if he didn't have to hear the constant litany of commentary about his wife's body and what various young males wanted to do with it… Not that seeing the wedding ring would stop such thoughts in their tracks, but at least people would know that I wasn't available. However, though I couldn't hear what the women were thinking, I could certainly hear what they were _saying_ about Edward… and I didn't like it.

"_God, check out his _ass_. Can you believe that?_"

"_Looks like the girl's with him, though._"

"_Starting your college career with a girlfriend is always pathetic. Don't worry, he'll probably Turkey Dump her._"

"_Turkey Dump?_"

"_Yeah, that's what they call Thanksgiving-time breakups._"

I shot Edward a look that told him exactly how I felt about the conversation behind us. His eyebrow raised in amusement as he steered me into the third-floor classroom where we were to have our first class, planting a kiss on the top of my head and pulling me closer as he did so. I heard a sharp intake of breath behind us and almost chuckled.

Edward pulled me into a seat about four rows back- still toward the front of the large lecture hall. I concentrated on not breaking my desk as I unfolded it from my armrest. As I finally managed to get all of the hinges unfolded in the right direction, I pushed my shield away from my mind, still not liking the sensation as I did so. _These desks are so unnecessary. I almost snapped the darned thing- would it kill them to have normal desks on four legs?_ Edward winked at me and leaned in to whisper.

"_The more elaborate the better- this is academia._"

I nodded and then looked away; three guys seemed to be jostling in the aisle to see who would get into our row of seats first. I didn't need to be a mind-reader to tell why they were so intent on sitting in my row.

"You know, if you didn't look so indecently appealing…" Edward growled in my ear. I elbowed him in the ribs with a noise like rocks being slammed together; the man at the lecture podium gave his TA a look of pure alarm and went to check the sound system. The tallest of the guys- a body-builder type- had won the 'battle' and was sliding into the seat next to me; similarly, a flat-ironed blonde was preening herself in the seat next to Edward. I rolled my eyes and fiddled with my wedding and engagement rings conspicuously on the desk.

"Family heirloom?" The body-builder-guy didn't have to sound so enthusiastic. "I'm Brian."

I turned my head toward him and was bombarded with the onslaught of his scent. _Classmate, not snack. Classmate, not snack._ My hands clenched and I bit my tongue against the sudden welling of venom in my mouth. "I'm Bella." I extended my right hand to him, and smiled in that particular feline way that Victoria had always smiled in my nightmares. He shuddered as he took my hand.

"Bad circulation?"

_You can't be serious._ "You could say so."

"Yeah, my mom has that problem, too." _If your mother really has this problem, you're going to have a really big shock next time you visit home._ "But, yeah. Your ring? It looks old. Is it a family keepsake or something?"

"In a way. It's been in my husband's family for quite a long time." I smirked a bit as I saw his jaw drop at the mention of the word _husband_.

"You're… married? But you look so young…"

"I suppose so." Edward shifted to put his arm around my shoulder, and Brian seemed to deflate like a balloon. The blonde on the other side of Edward made a slight noise of consternation.

To my relief, at that moment, the professor clapped his hands into the microphone set into his podium. "Okay, welcome to Introductory English Composition! I'm Professor Williamson, and…"

I had just reached for my notebook when Edward's head snapped violently toward the window. Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I turned to follow his gaze, and bit back a gasp.

In the window stood a vampire with such a look of devastation in his golden eyes that I could not bear to hold his gaze… a vampire that I'd never expected to see here, of all places.

"_Garrett?_"


End file.
